Sergio Armaroli: Cave Carmen (2008), for Violin solo and Empty(ness)

Composer(s)

Sergio Armaroli. He studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (Milan) and electronic music, jazz and percussion instruments at G. Verdi Conservatory of Milan, graduating with full marks and honours. He also studied at the Accademia del Teatro alla Scala (Milan) and at the Istituto Superiore de Arte de Habana in Cuba with a major in popular percussions. He studied and collaborated with Giuseppe Giuliano, Alessandro Melchiorre and with Jonathan Harvey. He has held numerous performance practice and improvisation masterclasses at Civic School of Milan, Agon Informatica Musica (Milan), S. Cecilia Conservatory of Rome, and at G. Verdi Conservatory of Milan. Creator and curator of the afterNotations Exhibition, Armaroli is a founding member of the Città Sonora Association.
He has recorded a number of CDs both as a percussionist and a vibraphonist/marimbist, performing in numerous theatres, concert seasons, ensembles, and orchestras such as Teatro Alla Scala, La Società del Quartetto, Accademia Filarmonica Romana, Venice Biennale, Exit 09 International Music Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK). Really important for his career was the encounter with the composer Sylvano Bussotti and with the music of Alvin Curran with whom he created two recording projects and curated two personal exhibitions: Sylvano Bussotti miniaturist and Signage. Likewise, it was crucial the meeting with Brunhild Ferrari Meyer and with the work and thought of Luc Ferrari, as well as the influence of the work and thought of John Cage and Marcel Duchamp.
Many of his works are realized for electronics and computer tape and as well as many are the multimedia and performative projects: Le souffle corporel for piano, computer tape and a dancer (Conservatory G. Verdi of Milan, 2006); AfterSilence work (Milan, 2007) for a drum and computer tape; Luc Ferrari Tautologos III (Arsenale Theater, Milan, 2018). Thanks to the work Magono-Te: mains des petits enfants (2019) his name was reported into the International Prize for the unconventional writing of musical scores (Lucca, 2016) and included in the bibliographic publication Experimental Improvisation Practice and Notation by Carl Bergstrom-Nielsen of the IIMA - International Improvised Music Archive (pag. 46/46). He is working in close cooperation with the trombonist and composer Giancarlo Schiaffini, with whom he shares an experimental and theoretical attitude in the practice of improvisation and "jazz", the latter being understood as "extension of the concept of art"; speaking of which, it was included by Flavio Caprera in the Dictionary of Italian jazz (Universale Economica Feltrinelli, Milan, 2014).
With the Swiss percussionist and composer Fritz Hauser, with whom he developed a compositional technique derived from John Cage's number pieces, he recorded Structuring The Silence. In Paris, in May 2006, he premiered at Giuseppe Giuliano's Citè de la Musique Miss Z with singer Ingrid Caven. From this concert, the director Bertrand Bonello filmed the documentary Ingrid Caven: Musique et voix (France, 2012). For Da Vinci Classics, he edited the aboutCAGE, a CDs series dedicated to the American composer and his compositions are published with Da Vinci Edition.
In the field of education, he published with Francesca Gemmo the book Percussion Instruments (Padus, Cremona). He is also a poet, painter and sound artist.